God helps those who help themselves

"Pray like everything depends on God,
Work like everything depends on you."

"God helps those who help themselves."

"Don't expect God to fix all your material problems."

These statements reflect the religion in which I was raised - not the teachings of a church, but the religion imbibed from the attitudes of the people around me.

There was no expectation of providential intervention. Prayer helps open our minds to better ways, but is not a means to change the will of the Almighty. Anything "miraculous" consisted of an individual becoming reformed, not sudden healing or mass feedings with a single picnic basket.

It wasn't that miracles were ruled out. They just happened to someone else, somewhere and somewhen else, like seeing a meteor land, not to us.

Praying for the miraculous divine intervention was "wishing in one hand...." Acceptance, endurance, strength to face the assaults of another day, for those one might ask, but not the cessation of the assaults. That was just, life.

I've had many experiences of the extraordinary fortuitous coincidence, and I continue to cultivate consciousness of the paternal watchcare of the Creators, but there's always a "reasonable explanation," the seemingly miraculous just showing up as part of the flow of events, not as evidently supernatural. So, not really different than the bad things that befall us, which we might attribute to diabolical influences. A reasonable person can't really deduce anything more than that stuff happens, and we can't know the complex web of antecedant causes, but we do have to deal with the consequences, and that gets back to acceptance, endurance....

Also, better days to come. I was raised to think prayers for that were okay.